MOTHERS

It was a simple idea, borne from all the times we used to drive to Dallas for the day. My plan was to drive to Tulsa, see mom and have lunch with my brother and sister-in-law, then drive home. I didn’t see that my plan for a day trip to Tulsa was really all that different from those day trips to Dallas. What’s four hours of driving to a destination, doing a bunch of shopping and then four hours of driving home? We did it all the time. But I forget. There’s a ‘we’ in that. Multiple drivers present to lighten the driving load. This was also twenty years ago, back during a time when I didn’t need glasses to drive. But I couldn’t afford to spend a whole weekend there. So I pretended be twenty years younger while wearing glasses.

I also thought that if I left early enough, I’d get to Mom’s before they started serving lunch and she’d be at her best self. I didn’t know that 11:00 AM was first nap time. When my brother and I walked into the care facility, we found our mom, laid back in her roller chair in the tv room, surrounded with her fellow residents. All of them were sound asleep. My brother and I looked at each other and shrugged. I then placed my hand on Mom’s shoulder, leaned over and whispered “Happy Mother’s Day. I love you.” Then we left and headed to lunch at a new Cajun place my brother had been wanting to try for months. I had just placed my order when my other sister-in-law called to tell my that Chris’s mom, Sangwan, had just passed away. I had left the dinning area when I saw who was calling, stepping out to a quieter space to hear the news and what comes next. I stood there, holding myself together, listening, nodding my head, murmuring the appropriate responses, before telling my sister-in-law to please let me know about the service.

I managed to keep it together all through lunch with my brother and sister-in-law. I allowed myself to break once I had said my goodbyes and was sitting in my car. I wept for Sangwan, even though I was glad she was no longer suffering and I wept for my mother and I wept for how disappointing the day turned out to be and I still had to make the four hour drive home. Chris’s recent lingering about made sense to me now. I was a stop over on his way for him to collect his mother. My heart aches for my nephew and niece. They really had the best of her. Sangwan was made to be a grandma and she embraced that role with her whole heart. Those two kids grew up wrapped in her love and devotion. The sudden loss of that must feel cold and desolate.

It seems like every time I visit Mom, she’s sleeping or only has about ten minutes of tolerance for a visitation. Particularly with a stranger, which is how she sees me. I’m relegated to seeing her daily activities in the pictures and videos her care facility post on Facebook. It feels like I am stalking my own mother. When I left her on Saturday, I remembered that the very last visit I made to see Dad, he was also sleeping. I sat next to him in tears because I had driven so far to see him, to hear him tell me something silly or make me laugh the way he always seemed to be able to do. It would be just a couple of months later when Mom would call me and tell me of his passing. I was camping when she called. Michael asked me if I wanted to pack up and go home and I told him “No. We’re doing the thing Dad loved to do.” I don’t know what the thing is for Mom. Shopping? Visiting gardens? She never chose camping, but was dragged into it, complaining the whole time. I suppose if I am camping when the call comes, that I will pack up and go home.

Is this the last time I see my mother?

I don’t know what the right thing to do is any more. I don’t know if I’m just not better off stalking my mother online then making the drive down every other month. At least in the pictures, she has some life to her. Randy and I will read texts from our sister about how Mom was on this day or that day. She went to lunch and ate three pieces of pizza! She was watching a John Wayne movie today! She looks really good! Randy and I never get this version of our mother when we visit. She doesn’t recognize us and she struggles to get words out. Or she’s sleeping. Where do I even start to celebrate my mother for Mother’s Day under these conditions? What a cruel holiday?! I can hear the gasps over what I want to write next, but I envy Sangwan’s freedom. I want that for my own mother. I want her to move on from her body that no longer serves her. This slow death makes for a heavy drawn out goodbye. There’s no moving on until she moves on.

More often then not, I am always trying to salvage these trips. I probably ate the best fried oysters I’ve eaten since the last time we made them at Christmas. I traveled along Route 66 for an hour or so, stopping to use my camera. It’s given me an idea for a photography showing, a large idea that I’ll hold close until I know if it’s something I’m capable of putting together. I picked up a to-go order from the Truck Stop Indian food place and when I got out of the car to go inside and get the food, the warm fragrant smells of Indian spices hit me in the parking lot. I know the food is going to be delicious and it was. While I take what I can from the salvaged moments, I know that my continued visits to Mom is unsustainable. I can’t keep up this pace of travel and disappointment.

But…I am stubborn.